Whatever Happened to That Girl?
by kg1507
Summary: Takes place after the season 3 finale. Just what happened to Korra anyway?


One thought haunts her. Every day she wakes up to it. It roars in her ears all her waking hours, and it is the last one she hears in her remaining moments of conciousness before sleep overtakes her.

_I failed._

Her first steps were agony, and it took months before she could even stand. Her legs felt like rubber, useless. A baby could make more progress than she could. Every time she fell, her confidence fell with her. She never let anyone help her back up, preferring to struggle on her own. She was the Avatar - she was strong, somewhere inside. She had to find it again.

_I failed._

A year passed before she was able to bend again. Katara had told her in the beginning that she would struggle, that her body had to heal before her spirit could follow. The poison had been in her for so long - it was unbelievable that she had been able to fight, let alone survive it. But it had left her damaged and broken, and only time could mend her. Korra hadn't listened at first. She was the Avatar - she had mastered all four elements - she had not gone through her entire life's worth of training only to lose it in twenty minutes.

But when she couldn't even bend a spilled glass of water back into its cup, she had burst into tears and flung it at the wall. It shattered like her heart.

_I failed._

Her mother cried almost every night, desperate to help her child that refused to be helped. Korra heard her father whisper soothing words, the same words every time. She had been through an ordeal no one could imagine. She needed time. She was strong-willed, and needed to find her own way. She needed their love, and she needed her space. So many things they thought she needed, but they were all wrong. She would concentrate on her breath as it moved through her chest as she listened to their muffled voices through the walls, and imagine that she was flying up, up, higher than the clouds and as far as the wind could take her. Far away, where no one could find her.

_I failed._

Her body had grown soft and weak. She'd always had pride when looking in the mirror and gazing at the way her muscles flexed in her arms, her shoulders, her back. They represented years of training, years of discipline, years of accomplishment. They represented strength. Sixteen months of being bound to a chair and unable to bend had made her as feeble as a newborn. She avoided mirrors, disgusted by her thin, frail frame. Her muscles had shrunk and disappeared, much like everything else that had made her special. Whenever she looked at her hands that had once held so much power, she saw only bones threatening to break through. She stared at them, feeling alien in her own skin, feeling nothing at all.

_I failed._

Her friends visited as often as they could, but Korra often wished they wouldn't come at all. Not because she didn't love them, but because she couldn't stand the way they acted when they saw her. Bolin would sit on the edge of her bed and remain unnaturally still for the entire visit, as if the slightest movement would break her. It wasn't normal for him to be so stoic - not Bolin, who couldn't stand in one spot for more than a minute, and whose smile never used to be so forced. Mako never even looked at her for more than a glance at a time, like he was frightened of what he saw. It got so bad than Korra refused to let him into the room after more than a year of his behavior, and they settled on writing letters instead. Asami was the one who made her feel the least broken, but her visits were few and far between due to the commitment her company demanded from her.

Three years had passed, and the four of them had not once been all together in the same room at the same time.

_I failed._

She left home months ago, despite Katara's disapproval and despite her parent's pleas to stay. Korra had been bending for a year, walking for two, and desperate to leave her life behind for three. She was ready to disappear, to walk out from under the world's ever-watchful eye and fade into the crowd where no one knew her failures, her title, or her name. She didn't tell anyone that, though. She told her parents she was going back to Republic City, and that she was ready to take on her responsibilities as the Avatar once more. They had begrudgingly let her go, but the look Katara had given her as she'd said her farewells made Korra wonder if she'd seen straight through her lie.

Late in the night, she'd taken her father's war knife to her hair and chopped it short, caught the first boat to the Earth Kingdom, and never once looked back.

"Here," The arena manager threw down a small wad of bills. "For your lackluster participation."

Korra stuffed the cash in her bag, knowing it would buy her a few days worth of bread, maybe a fish or two, but that was likely it. "Thanks." She replied weakly. She'd been so sure this time - she could've beaten that girl, she knew she could've. The purse would've bought her a room, a bed, and enough food to make her forget she hadn't eaten a proper meal in weeks. Instead she would bend herself another shelter in the woods, waiting for the next tournament to be posted.

_I'll win next time,_ She thought, but she had repeated that line to herself so many times over the last six months that it had grown stale and she barely believed it anymore.

"You know, you look very familiar… yeah, you - you kinda look like that Avatar girl!" He said. The smirk on his face spoke volumes. He didn't believe a worthless piece of dirt like her could ever be the Avatar. She didn't blame him, but her face hardened anyway.

"I get that a lot." She turned to go, trying to ignore the way her ribs ached with each slumped step.

"Whatever happened to her, anyway?" He asked, and she detected a slight tone to his voice - one that meant much more than 'where is the Avatar now?'

_She's dead. She died three years ago in a crater, by a madman she couldn't defeat._ Korra could hear the words echoing in her mind, the ones that hadn't stopped taunting her from the moment she opened her eyes and drew a choking breath as the mercury was pulled from her body.

_I failed. I failed. I failed them all. I couldn't beat him. I wasn't strong enough._ Six months had passed, and she had taken every fight, every tournament, every challenge, and she had lost them all. She could bend, but her skill had dulled like a blunt knife and she was slow to react to oncoming attacks. She lacked grace, and more often than not resorted to wildness and bending without thought or foresight. She had no time for meditation - the only training she practiced was in the ring. She could almost her Tenzin's disapproving voice in her ear, reminding her of the balance one needed between body and soul in order to bend masterfully, but she always pushed those thoughts aside. She had tried that before, and it had failed her in every way. She was the Avatar - she did not need balance. What she needed was victory, and to regain all the strength she had lost and become even stronger than before. She would become strength itself, and she would never fail again.

Korra's eye throbbed, but she ignored it as she walked, contemplating on what the man had asked. _What happened to you?_ Try as she might, she couldn't come up with any other answer.

Korra's voice dropped, dull and lifeless as fatigue took over. "I wouldn't know." She replied, and kept walking.


End file.
